


Mr. Fangor's Garden

by dagas isa (dagas_isa)



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Married Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-17
Updated: 2010-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:01:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagas_isa/pseuds/dagas%20isa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elfangor's favorite room in their new dwelling is the garden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mr. Fangor's Garden

Elfangor's favorite room in their new house is the garden. When he shares this observation with his wife, Loren gives a delightful laugh and then explains gently to him that most humans do not consider an outdoor garden to be a room. Elfangor considers this to be an unfortunate short-coming in human cognition—a deficiency in aesthetic perception rather than in scientific knowledge. The latter is at least correctable.

They've moved in to this small house, and while Loren works to fix the interior of the house to suit their needs and aesthetic tastes—a human ritual he is more than happy to leave her—Elfangor has claimed the yard for his own. More than one neighbor has commented on his "green thumb" and laughed when Elfangor looks at his hand and says it's more of a peachy-brown color. Loren rolls her eyes and explains the idiom when they're alone.

By Andalite standards, his garden is middling, and his botany skills are mediocre at best. The tiny patch of grass allotted to their human house could feed a juvenile in the height of the season. At any other time of year or for any larger an Andalite, the ration would be pitiful. He supposes it's a good thing that humans are not grass-eaters, else they would starve.

Humans do occasionally eat plants other than grass, Elfangor has learned, and in the grand human tradition, he keeps a vegetable garden. In one corner, the carrots, zucchini and tomatoes are ripening, as long as the deer and rabbits stay away from them. It's too late this year for peas, but the pumpkins are coming along well.

He's growing flowers as well. They are mostly ornamental, pleasant in sight and scent, and the heavy lilac bushes near the garage—the house for the yellow Mustang—attract butterflies. His pride is the rose topiaries that line the front of the house, and once he can improvise tools appropriate for gene manufacture and manipulation, he plans on pushing a lucky human botanist into "discovering" the first true-blue rose.

Loren sits out in the garden sometimes, with her human book and some iced-tea, and reads. Or, if he's working, she'll don a hat on top of her curls and help him weed the vegetable patch. And on summer evenings like this one, they'll sit back on the porch that overlooks his handiwork and watch the sunset. The chirping of crickets and the mild intoxication of wine brings them closer together on the silly swinging bench that Loren insists they have. She then leans on his chest and admits that the garden too is her favorite room.

The statement means more than he can tell her in any language, so he makes do with a gesture she's taught him to appreciate: a kiss.

It's a fair cultural exchange, he supposes.


End file.
